Eight, twenty-five, and twelve (if we don’t include spin-offs, prequels, and sequels) are the respective amount of series those programs have. Let’s take Grey’s Anatomy for example, you would have to waste 272 hours and 33 minutes of your life to finish the whole thing, which accounts to around 11.5 days without a break! Not only do I have better things to do with my time, but I also get bored by the same characters and very similar plot lines throughout.
Don’t get me wrong, I have watched long-form shows like Friends and The Office, but most of them I start and never get around to finishing. My abandoned list of shows is so much longer than my completed list, including Modern Family, Orange is the new black, and Stranger Things.
Maybe I’m a philistine of television, or maybe I have a short attention span, but I think shorter runs that leave me wanting more are so much more successful than those where the writers have run out of ideas and seem to just be making a cash grab. Fleabag and The Queen’s Gambit are just two series that I think have the perfect amount of screen time to keep a great storyline without me losing interest.
This might be a controversial opinion, but when I start a series I should not feel as if I have a mountain to climb from the comfort of my sofa. Keep things short, sweet, and well-written!
